A sub-interval-based scheduling algorithm in duty-cycled wireless sensor networks

Duty cycling is a common method to conserve energy consumption in wireless sensor network (WSN). In duty cycling, a large duty cycle interval can result in low energy consumption but a long end-to-end (E2E) delay. Moreover, several applications require that consumed energy is minimized and packets are forwarded to the sink within a specific time. In order to deal with E2E delay problem, there have been several existing works in duty-cycled WSNs but they require time synchronization or high message complexity. Most of them still cause high E2E packet delay. Therefore, in this paper, we propose sub-interval-based scheduling algorithm that aims to enhancing average E2E delay in duty-cycled WSNs. By assigning sooner sub-interval for nodes that can make longer progress among potential forwarders, E2E delay can be reduced significantly. Numerical results show that sub-interval-based scheduling algorithm can achieve lower latency than DASF.